Marcos asks tribunal to hasten VP poll protest case

Former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr. has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to hasten the decryption and printing of ballot images from clustered precincts in 30 provinces that are the subject of his election protest against Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo.

In a seven-page motion before the court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), the Marcos camp sought the decryption and printing from secure digital (SD) cards and data storage devices from 36,465 clustered precincts ahead of the scheduled preliminary conference on June 21.

Decryption and printing of the ballot images are to be conducted and supervised by the election records and statistics departments of the Commission on Elections.

Marcos counsel George Erwin Garcia said the 2010 Rules of the PET allows any course of action to expedite the proceedings. Such procedure will “assist in the preparation for the recount proceedings and the presentation of evidence for the protest,” he said.

Marcos is contesting the vice-presidential election results in 39,221 clustered precincts, composed of 132,446 regular precincts. He wants a recount in 36,465 clustered precincts and the annulment of results in the rest.

The Marcos camp claims the election was marred by “massive electoral fraud, anomalies and irregularities” such as pre-shading of ballots, secure digital cards pre-loaded with data, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning vote-counting machines, and an “abnormally high” unaccounted votes or undervotes for the position of vice president.

1 Comment

The amount that BBM paid will only cover the manual count of votes from the precincts indicated in his complaints. Decryption and printing of ballot images was not part of the conditions that he asked the SC to do. Decryptions of ballot images? It seems like none of his advisers / lawyers know what they really want and what they really want to accomplish. These fools will only make themselves look bad by not knowing what they are talking about and to add insult to their ignorance, it seems like they are still on fishing expedition, trying to find evidence that he was cheated. Here is the bottom line of this issue ; BBM can hire computer expert that have a Ph.D in IT, concentration in Digital Computer, graduated with honors at MIT, and still cannot find anything on the machines used during the presidential election that sabotaged or stole votes intended for him. There is NONE or ZERO. The COMELEC Network was NOT compromised, meaning No hackers were able to get into the network because the security programs that were installed require few authentications.